OF PIGMENT HUNTING AND WATER INFUSED WITH BIRDSONG

And the sex life of seaweed!

The kitchen here at our Forest House has become a lab. I need to be careful that my husband doesn’t end up tasting my concoctions. Is it tea or ink? Am I boiling up seaweed or making soup?

Overnight I have become a pigment hunter. Suddenly the entire world looks like a palette, teeming with colours, potential and creative possibilities. Overnight the boundary between art journal, recipe book and grimoire also dissolved.

Every artist is an alchemist. This is hardly news!

I started painting at age two and never stopped, so that is 55 years of painting so far! Until recently I bought my art materials ready-made in shops but I have always admired people who make their own paints. So I decided to challenge and educate myself about mulling paint, boiling down ink and the mystical properties of gum arabic.

As I become more connected to my Inner Ocean and other waters, I have stopped drinking alcohol. However, my husband left a bottle containing a few inches of red wine standing around and of course I saw only red ink, so I used it to draw!

On Sunday we went for a hike at Stendörren, our local nature reserve:

Stendörren is a popular, well-known nature reserve that attracts visitors from near and far. There is a range of environments – from nutrient-rich shore meadows to rocks with windswept pine trees. Stendörren is on Sweden’s east coast between Nyköping and Trosa.

Stendörren means The Stone Door. It is situated at the southern end of the Stockholm Archipelago, which has 24,000 islands! Approaching from the sea, those islands look like a stone wall or barrier. The captain of any boat needs to navigate carefully to find a safe gap or passage through this granite barrier, a “stone door” or “door carved out of stone”.

I collected water from the Baltic Sea and rock pool water. Next I collected lake water and well water, on our own doorstep. Our house is a short walk from a lake (which we cannot see due to the dense forest surrounding us) and it also has its own well, so we drink (slightly brownish) water filtered through the forest floor). I often wonder if tiny traces of fly agaric mushrooms float around our well, because I dream so vividly here.

Spiritually speaking I perceive water as the blood of Mother Earth. I stood on one (pinkish) rock by the sea and at my feet I spotted a white placenta (really an accidental shape made by guano or bird poop) with an umbilical cord stretching to the waterline. This moved me to tears. Of course tears are just another example of sacred water.

Since I arrived here I have had intense dreams about green embryos unfurling (and I soon observed this happening in “reality” with the ferns rising all around our house).

The Stone Door showed me embryonic or “baby” (new life) forms in so many manifestations: the nesting and shrieking birds, the saplings, the seaweed bobbing in the water, the parents carrying babies in backpacks along the hiking trails.

Walking where the Forest meets the Sea I ponder the life cycle of seaweed and kelp. Two months ago my husband and I went for a walk by moonlight, once again here in Sweden, and he told me a story about one specific seaweed that sounded like a fairy-tale. I thought he was making it up on the spot to charm me, but he was adamant that it was scientific information! Here is the story I was told in Swedish, and my translation follows immediately below:

Blåstångens fortplantning är fascinerande och varje tångruska är antingen en hon-eller hanindivid. De blir könsmogna vid 4-5 år ålder. Då släpper de ifrån sig miljontals ägg eller spermier från topparna av plantan (receptaklerna) under väldigt speciella omständigheter. Det ska nämligen vara full-eller nymåne för att befruktning ska äga rum.

The reproduction of bladderwrack is fascinating. Every individual seaweed plant is either a “he” or a “she”. They reach reproductive age around 4-5 years. They then release millions of eggs or sperms from the tips of the plants (the receptacles). They [only] do so under very special circumstances: it needs to be either full or moon or new moon for fertilization to occur [!]

Did you know this? It is incredible how much I don’t know and I am a compulsive collector of knowledge, myths, folklore and words in foreign languages! They are the pigments of our soul…

In such powerful liminal places, hunting for pigments and collecting water, the boundary between Self and Other dissolves temporarily, as does the separation between human being and land, between animate and (so called) inanimate substances. Everything on (or in) our Earth contain life force. We are all part of a larger Dreaming (to borrow a word from the aboriginal peoples of Australia).

I have become acutely sensitized to how water becomes infused with bird song, as well as the wind and spirits of place adding an energy signature too. The water in our lake is not the same further down the shore, nor if you walk alongside the short canal connecting it to the next lake. I will write more about that soon.

Over large intervals of time water carves, splits and pulverizes rocks. Water also turns pigment into paint. Water even turns painters into wild swimmers (but that is a blog for another day!)

Out on the land I even encounter magical twins, or parallel selves. Shown at the top of this essay is a photograph of my shadow embracing a rock pool on the cliffs by the Baltic Sea. I happened to look down, and there she was: my rock pool sister, teeming with micro life and minerals, reflecting glimpses of the blue sky. Of course I hugged her!

In the alchemical sense, death does not exist, only phase transitions do, the great cosmic dance between elements and evolutionary cycles.

The molecules that make up "me" have always existed and will continue their dance. Shamans call this shape shifting.

“The Stone Door”

I stood on the cliffs and enjoyed a moment of utter wonder, deep bliss and inner peace. I am already dead - I am still alive, how marvellous! Time is an illusion. Time feels so real! Time is a straightjacket (“I don’t have time!”) yet Time allows the playing of music and the unfolding of events. Time allows green embryos to unfurl and artists to paint…

Art may be found in galleries and museums but generally artists are not.

The painter is painted onto a landscape only temporarily. Oh so briefly she embraces and witnesses Life's great dance with itself...

Until recently ago it was my aim to post two essays a week here on Substack. Moving forward, I will try (but sometimes fail) to get out one essay a week, due to travel, international teaching commitments and family care responsibilities (our family lives with Alzheimer’s and I have written several posts about that). If you would like to see regular posts about about sacred art, Nordic spirituality and my life as a Forest Witch, please follow me on Instagram or Facebook, thank you!

Imelda Almqvist, Forest House and Forest School, Sweden

BIO FOR IMELDA ALMQVIST

Imelda Almqvist is an international teacher of Sacred Art and Seiðr/Old Norse Traditions (the ancestral wisdom teachings of Northern Europe). So far she has written four non-fiction books and two picture books for children. Natural Born Shamans: A Spiritual Toolkit for Life (Using shamanism creatively with young people of all ages) in 2016, Sacred Art: A Hollow Bone for Spirit (Where Art Meets Shamanism) in 2019, Medicine of the Imagination - Dwelling in Possibility (an impassioned plea for fearless imagination) in 2020 and North Sea Water In My Veins (The Pre-Christian spirituality of the Low Countries) was published in June 2022.

The Green Bear is a series of picture book for children, aged 3 – 8 years. The stories and vibrant artwork, set in Scandinavia, invite children to explore enchanting parallel worlds and to keep their sense of magic alive as they grow up.

Imelda has presented her work on both The Shift Network and Sounds True. She appears in a TV program, titled Ice Age Shaman, made for the Smithsonian Museum, in the series Mystic Britain, talking about Mesolithic arctic deer shamanism.

Imelda is currently working on a handbook for rune magicians (about the runes of the Elder Futhark) and on more books in the Green Bear Series. Imelda runs an on-line school called Pregnant Hag Teachings, where all classes she teaches remain available as recordings, which can be watched any time!

Website:                           

http://www.shaman-healer-painter.co.uk/

YouTube Channel:             youtube.com/user/imeldaalmqvist

Online School:                  https://pregnant-hag-teachings.teachable.com/courses/

Facebook:                            https://www.facebook.com/imelda.almqvist/

Instagram:                          https://www.instagram.com/almqvistimelda/

Twitter: @ImeldaAlmqvist

Imelda Almqvist